Disclaimer: If I owned The West Wing, I'd make Aaron Sorkin my cabana boy.
Notes: This was written for majorsamfan who requested "Five things that would have happened had CJ taken the job the Santos Administration offered."


She has plenty of time to study that Takings Clause of Toby's.

Two years turn into four swifter than she cares to think about, so she doesn't. She ends the fourth year by turning in her security clearance for an actual holiday season. Since Josh isn't there to yell in her ear, her mind finds other things to puzzle out. And recently, she thinks about the complexity of one stray comma found by one of her oldest friends.

Here's what she doesn't think about: she ignores that she barely knows Toby anymore. She learned early into the Santos administration the fragile reach of an olive branch – it stretches about as far as the doors to the building in the center of Pennsylvania Avenue. She decides to pass through them each day for another four years. And when Toby quits returning her calls, she knows this is the fluid nature of relationships.

Now that she's done, she studies the Takings Clause. She wonders how one comma can change things so much.